Bears bite harder, send 560 stocks to lower circuit, 260 trade at 52-week low

Bears have began biting the markets harder, driving the benchmark indices past their psychological levels of 18,000 for the Nifty, and 60,000 for the BSE Sensex on December 23.

The benchmark indices corrected more than 1 percent on Friday, taking (in absolute terms) the total loss nearly 1,000 points on the Nifty50 and 3,600 points on the BSE Sensex in last three weeks especially from record highs touched on December 1.

Emergence of Covid cases in several countries, a hawkish tone adopted by global central banks, and growing recession fears in developed countries built the selling pressure in equity markets.

The fall in broader markets was more than benchmarks as the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices corrected 2-3 percent on Friday. All sectors, barring pharma, traded with severe pain on the day.

“The global market backdrop continues to be weak due to the strong economic data from the US. Data from US on consumer confidence, jobless claims, and the Q3 GDP numbers surprised on the upside indicating continuation of the hawkish monetary stance from the Fed,” VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, said.

He feels the high market volatility of the last six days is likely to continue. There is an element of overreaction in the market to the Covid news, he said.

Also read: Black Friday | Sensex, Nifty down; Covid, recession fears weigh on sentiment

As a result, the number of scrips at lower circuit clearly outnumbered number of stocks at upper circuit. And the similar kind of situation was seen in 52-week high and low segments.

We have seen more than 560 stocks at lower circuit and 260 stocks at 52-week low, against 120 stocks at upper circuit and 61 stocks at 52-week high, at the time of writing this article.

Stocks that hit lower circuit included Megasoft, Salasar, Oil Country Tubular, Sambhaav Media, Ritco Logistics, Liberty Shoes, Hubtown, Kamdhenu, Imagicaa, Deep Energy Resources, PC Jeweller, TGB Hotels, Sakthi Sugars, Zenith Exports, Zee Learn, Walchandnagar Industries, Arshiya, Dhanlaxmi Bank, LGB Forge, and Mcleod Russell.

Also read: Investors suffer Rs 16 lakh crore loss in 7 sessions as bears regain control over D-Street

Further, more than 30 stocks from ‘A’ and ‘B’ groups touched record lows on Friday including Car Trade, Clean Science, Gateway Distriparks, Gland Pharma, Indigo Paints, CE Info Systems, FSN E-Commerce Ventures (Nykaa), Supriya Lifesciences, Dharmaj Crop Guard, DreakFolks Services, Harsha Engineers, Heranba Industries, Inox Green Energy Services, Krsnaa Diagnostics, Keystone Realtors, Syrma SGS Technology, and Sula Vineyards.

Apart from that, stocks like Aarti Industries, Amber Enterprises, Balaji Amines, Century Textiles, Dollar Industries, Dishman Carbogen, EKI Energy, Filatex India, Galaxy Surfactants, Greaves Cotton, Indian Energy Exchange, Jindal Poly, Nippon Life, Onmobile Global, Quess Corp, Polyplex Corporation, Relaxo Footwear, Rossari Biotech, Rupa, Sunteck Realty, SISI, Voltas, and Tata Teleservices hit 52-week low.

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